On this episode of New England we head to western Massachusetts to a place known as the mos haunted location in all the Berk A spooky train tunnel with a pa so dark it's known as the Bloody So knowing that around 200 people died, building this and being on a train that stoppe in the middle of this darkness, you do start to think about tha it starts to give you a strange You never know.

You do hear a lot of stories abo And then we'll head just over th to the Green Mountain state to uncover the sinister details that state's only known witch tr They would cut a hole in the ic on the river, and they would dro Because if she were a witch, the powers of Inferno would have held her up.

We're looking for ghosts and wit On this episode of New England L Legends.

Myths.

Folklore.

New England is a land of history and mystery.

From our shorelines to our mount And everywhere in between.

Tales of the strange, the supernatural and the bizarr have always been part of life he Are these just stories heard around the campfire or is there some truth to these Let's find out as we explore these legends.

There's nothing more quintessentially New England than a road trip in the fall, or leaf peeping as we like to call it, around th And there isn't a more scenic d in all of Massachusetts than rou Better known as the Mohawk Trai this historic road cuts a straig across the top of the state fro all the way to the beautiful and Berkshire Mountains at the other And that's where I'm headed to explore a location known as haunted in all the Berkshires.

The bloody pit, better known by and locals as the Hoosac Tunnel.

But why the ominous name and haunted reputation?

Let's find out.

It's a story of mystery, of murd and of unimaginable tragedy.

Do I have your attention?

Great.

Let's get started.

We begin at the eastern portal to the tunnel, which is located just up the road in Florida.

Yes, you heard me correctly.

Flo Florida, Massachusetts that is.

The late Stanley Brown, Longtime town historian explain how Florida got its unusual name in this interview from 2017.

Well they picked that name, I've been because it was about the time that the United States was considering to buy the terri of Florida.

And, some people have said it w when the first settlers came in and the mountain laurel blossome and there was a lot of flora.

So that could be that too.

I love to tell them that we're from Florida and we're only 20 miles from Jac Jacksonville, Vermont.

Life on a mountaintop isn't easy and the population here is small 750 people.

But the creation of the Hoosac at the end of the 19th century made Florida a bustling place, from all over came to help build The tunnel was the key to openin commerce by rail to the eastern part of Massachus It took 24 years to build and cos more than $20 million to bore a four and three quarter mile str through the Hoosac Mountain rang when it opened in 1875, connect to the neighboring city of North it was the largest tunnel of its kind in the country, but the completion of the tunnel came at an unspeakable cost.

Almost 200 men died during its construction.

The tunnel is private property and it's still an active rail li so it's not only dangerou to enter inside, it's illegal.

But I know someone who's been in with permission.

In 2015, filmmaker Tim Lawrence bought a to a rare trip offered up to the to take a ride through the tunn and he brought his camera with h So I got to tell you, riding th the tunnel was a dream come true I'd always wanted to go through and when I found out that Amtrak had an excursion I knew I needed to be on that.

And obviously you know about the history of th Yeah.

Talk about the constructio and what happened when it was be So we're standing in front of the east portal right now.

One invention that was developed during the tu process was nitroglycerin.

There's a guy named George Mowb who had been working on this sub And when he brought it here it wasn't fully developed yet.

And so he actually built what w the Acid Works over on the west where they refined nitroglycerin and got it to a pretty, pretty decent state almost to what it's like today.

And so they started producing th and using that instead of black powder to blast through the rock.

Now, one thing that's kind of in about the Nitro is back then they thought it was most stable at 90°F.

So anybody who knows anything a knows that that's actually extre unstable.

And so that added to quite a fe deaths that you find at the tunn My goodness, going through it, It was an odd experience.

The first thing you feel is the because when you're outside it's whatever temperature it is.

But inside that it's about 55 de round.

And so that's what you first get Then you get the smell of the d and then you feel the humidity because there's always moisture inside of it.

And it's almost an ominous feeli or whatever.

But the center shaft is a for me, one of the weirder parts was when the train actuall in the tunnel.

It was unexpected.

You didn' actually feel it, stop or hear i So we just stopped inside of th Tunnel, and we're not sure why.

It must be the ghost of Ringo Ke when you're in the middle of the and the train stopped and it's and you know about the history.

You know about the people who di what's that feel like?

So knowing that around 200 people died building thi and being on a train that stoppe in the middle of this darkness you do start to think about that and it starts to give you a stra feeling.

You know, I can't sa is if we saw any ghosts that day you never know.

You hear a lot of stories about Do you think the tunnel is haunt I do believe in the spiritual re I do believe that there probabl is something, going on in there.

I have heard a lot of different Some of them are pretty easy to explain away.

However, I have heard a story that I can't fully explain.

It was a group of people who wen is about midnight one night.

They were in there doing a sean and then they all just suddenly this incredibly, almost evil feeling over them and almost panicked and like we need to get out of here now.

So they started out they left the candle that they h and as they were walking, suddenly a large rock skipped across the tracks in front of them from behind as if somebody had thrown it at And then when they got out fro the end of the tunnel and looked they could have sworn that the candle was moving towar So it's, Yeah, it's it's one of those things that, it's hard to say one way or the if it's haunted, but it wouldn't surprise me.

Just under 200 workers lost.

Some of them still lie insid the mountain, trapped there for Who were these tragic souls?

I headed down the mountain to the city of North Adams, hom to the western portal of the tun to find out more about the peop who built it from historian Paul Who were the people who worked in the tunnel?

Primarily, They were Irish and Scottish.

Did they come and settle or did they leave?

Some of them certainly left.

Some of them stayed.

And of course, some of them sta than they intended, because of c the guesstimate figure of how many died was 196.

We are here in Hillside Cemetery standing at the grave of James K who was a blacksmith who worked at the west shaft.

And, one day there was a fire, and he was running toward the burning building trying to anyone who might be trapped insi When the building exploded and it threw a piece of wood, jagged piece through his jugular Not pretty.

There are several ghost stories associated with the tunnel.

Ringo Kelly was a blaster, allegedly, who worked in the tun and one day he accidentally set a blast prematurel and two of his friends were kill And then he started reporting, hearing their voices in there calling to him.

And then one day, he disappeared and was not seen again until a y when he was found dead on the v where his two friends had died.

Probably the greatest disaster was the, fire at the central sha A group of men had just been se down the shaft in an iron bucket to, dig ou the spoil that had been blasted.

And, someone else was going into the cellar of one of the other buildings where some naphtha was stored.

Naphtha was an early name for ga A spark ignited the naphtha fume and within minutes, the entire c was burning out of control.

And when the floor collapsed, burning beams and, star point drills fell down the One of the men down belo was literally skewered from head And, when enough smoke had clear a man was sent down on a rope with three lamps, and he was down about 300ft when two of the lamps were seen He had run into a layer of poiso and so he was hauled back up aga and he gasped out, no hope!

And it was a year before the bodies were taken out and work resumed.

During that year, people reporte seeing those men going to work at the central shaft.

Were on top of the mountain, 1000ft below us, is the HoosacTunnel, and that is the central shaft.

A giant exhaust fan made to pul all the smoke out of that tunnel When this was built so many lives were lost in the w disaster of the entire 24 year construction process.

A memorial across the stree from the Central Shaft Exhaust b commemorates the lives of 13 wor who were lost on October 19th, 1867.

With so much bloo spilled into these Berkshire mou it's no wonde the place has such a haunted rep The stories of ghostl and supernatural experiences are People who've gone into the tun have claimed to hear the sound of disembodied voices or see wa or headless apparitions holding and there are stories of people who have ente the tunnel, never to be seen aga But before you chalk those up t there's at least one documented to consider.

In July of 1973, Bernard Hastab who was living just west of Nort in nearby Williamstown, told peo he was going to visit relatives in Greenfield and set off by foot.

He decided to take a shortcut through the tunnel.

He went in and was never seen ag The story of the HoosacTunnel c been ripped out of today's headl It was grossly overbudget.

It took way too long to build.

And of course, people died during the construction.

A lot of people died.

Almost 200 souls lost.

And whether you believe in ghost there' something ominous about this pla The Hoosac Tunnel is both an engineering marvel and to those who died building it, an enduring testamen to man's ingenuity and persevera It's a reminder of the cost of p And if a ghost is history demanding to be remembered, then the Hoosac Tunnel is most d haunted.

Among all the New England states and their changing seasons, fall in Vermont may just be the most special.

It's colorful, mysterious, and some might even say magical.

Vermont is very magical.

All you've got to do is enter Ve and you're in a complete different world.

And the idea of witches and vamp and these things that history is very real here.

And so I think you know, walking you know, through the old First cemetery right here behind the m any time of the year but particularly as the leaves are falling and changing color and the weather is getting coole I mean, it's hard to avoid tha sort of kind of rich history and It is magical.

And it's, you get caught up in i And there's one small town in the Green Mountain State that holds a special distinction in its history.

I like to describe Pownal as where Vermont begins because it's nestled between Massachusetts and New Y and it's on the very southern ti So it's just right down there.

And its just welcoming to all who wants to come.

Pownal is bucolic, picturesque and the site of the only recorde witch trial in Vermont history.

Witches are something that was kind of always par of New England lore that spanned from the 17th century up throug and even into the early 19th cen And so we don't have any stories witch trials here in Vermont.

But the Krieger witch trial is trial that has been passed down Well, folklore tells the legend Krieger.

As such, after Wido Krieger's husband went to his fi neighbor started saying that Widow Kriege was an extraordinary woman with extraordinary powers.

That's basically the only accus that we have leveled against her We don't know exactly what that because she was an extraordinary and because her husband had pass she was basically accused of being a witch.

So she was brought before the safety committee.

The testimonies were taken and the safety committee decided to defer making a final decisio but to put her to a test instead They came up with kind of two op One was that she would climb a t and they would cut it down.

And if she survived, she was a because, she was being helped by Then the second one was, well they could put her to the water and the water test would be that they would cut a hole in the ice on the river and they would drop her in, if s Well, then she wasn't a witch.

So they decided that they would do the water test.

So the neighbors all gathered a and they cut a hole in the ice, and they dropped Widow Krieger d and she sank right down to the bottom im Luckily they were able to retrieve her b And so she was found innocent because if she were a witch, the powers of Inferno would have held her up.

So that's the story of Widow Kri and the witch trial.

So the Krieger witch is based basically on a single account, which was published actually, here I hav I have the book right next to me This is an account of early hist by T.E.

Brownell.

And this comes from, a compilation called The Vermont Historical Gazetteer, which was published by Abby Mari Hemenway in the 1860s.

So we're talking Civil War era.

So this is about 80 years after we believe to be the actual peri of the Krieger witch trial.

And that's basically all we rea in terms of historical documenta of the trial itself.

When we started, all that was kn about the Widow Krieger in Powna was that, we happened to have r that were called Krieger rocks.

And so that led me to start searching for Kriegers in Joyce was really abl to go through the historical doc and determine, it was Margaret K She was born in Williamstown in She was married to, Yuri Kriege George Krieger, as his name was Found his marriage certificate to a Marguerite Schumacher.

They lived there in Pownal.

They married in 1741, buil a mill there in Pownal, in the 1 And because they had kind of bu this mill and improved the land that they were living on even though they were considered unquote squatters by the English who arrived in the 1760s.

They granted them that land because they had improved it.

And so they lived there.

Right below the rocks.

Now known as Krieger Rocks or witch rocks.

She married young yeoman, when she was 16 years old.

Johann was 14 years her senior.

They had three sons, all three actually moved down to Williamst And when they went into adulthoo and opened up their own mill.

So she was a wife she was a mother, she was a gran And, you know, all at a very you And widow, Krieger's husband John George Krieger, passed away And so when he passed away, our is that, a woman did not legally have the right to ow in, in New England in the 18th c So I think that when Johann pass there was this mill and there was this lady and there was this land because they gave him land and I greed took over, I think people the land and people wanted the m And what better way than to acc of being a witch just to get rid And she did move back with her grandchildren and the land and the mill did go to somebody What does it mean to be an extraordinary woman?

Well, a woman who can run a mil and own property and take care o after her husband is no longer and that probably scared them.

And they wanted that land.

And so, that's probably the rea why she was accused of witchcraf Finding her grave was an extremely extremely moving experience for and I found in records that she was buried in Williamst And so my husband and I went to the cemetery and I said, where are you?

And when I said, where are you?

I look to my right, the next road, over and down.

I could just see an “M”.

And it's still very emotional fo And I just tore off down that road and I went over and it It was her stone.

Mrs. Margaret And there was John George next t Her husband's name.

And I did something I've never done before.

I hugged that stone and I cried, and I told her I wa for what she went through, because the whole time I was doi research, I adopted her kind of like as a And I kept thinking, what would I do back then if I was her frien when she was going through this?

And I was answered at that stone when I hugged and I told her I was so sorry, and I thought that's what I would have done, I would have hugged her and I would have supported her, and I would have said, I' sorry about what you're going th I was working with Jamie on another project and we were talking and, I brought up, you know, Widow Krieger and he you know, we really need to do s And, and at the time they were, they were putting a marker up in Manchester, the vampire ma And I said Widow Krieger deserves a marker.

And, you know, there in Pownal right there on the Hoosac River, You look up people are familiar with Krieger Some of the people even called t the Witch Rocks.

But not many people know the his They don't know why it's called Krieger Rocks.

They don't know why it's called witch Rock.

So by being able to kind of have this marker, and have people be able to, kno that history allows them to conn allows them to think about how t can affect us today, and allows us to move forward better informed.

The dedication ceremony, last year was extremely, extremely special.

We had the witches walk which was folks from the Pownal Historical Societys idea where we invited people to come in whateve they kind of understood a witch But there were also peopl who self-identified as witches who came left offerings at the base of the marker.

On that day, we had people kind across the bridge, which goes right over the Hoosa River, right next to the marker.

And honestly, we could feel her next to us because she was there So it was extremely, extremely, We had music, you know, Joyce an said a couple of word and we had activities for the ki So it was really just a really wonderful opportunity to come t celebrate history, celebrate com and use history as a way to lear “Thank you all for coming.” It was festive, but it was also like in defiance.

We were defying the people who thought that they could do this to her or to anybody else.

We were saying no way.

It's not going to happen Not in our space.

And, you know, I think that's wh places like Powna and small communities in Vermont so wonderful is because you can and you can come together and you can use history as a wa to celebrate and, and look to th But women are still being consid less than men, not always given the same rights Wido Krieger was basically run out of and wasn't allowed to continue to run the mill.

So it's it's still a journey for women's You know, folklore is telling th passing them down from generation to generatio and so that each generation can And that's why it was really im for us to have the children ther last year to, just so that they can see that we're all people and we might no look alike, we might not act the we might not dress the same.

It doesn't matter.

We're all people and we're all here together.